Cold Water... One Year Later

"Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land."
Proverbs 25:25

I can't believe it's been a year ago today since we got our good news from China. October 3, 2005 was the day that we got the call from Children's Hope saying that they had our referral... the first thing they said to me was, "She's beautiful!"

And certainly she is very beautiful, in so many ways. You've seen the pictures and read my glowing descriptions. She is also a two and half year old that wants her own way, that tries my patience, and that needs to be potty trained. She gets marker on her clean clothes and spills her cereal. She has learned how to stick her tongue out at her siblings and sometimes says, "Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom" so many times in a row that I think I may lose my mind.

She's two and a half. These things are all normal and difficult and trying and sometimes funny. She may look like an angel when she's sleeping, but she's a regular little girl.

And that's the thing... she's a little girl, our little girl. She is as much a part of our family as Caleb, Seth and Madelyn are. Yes, I do think about China and her birth mother and the orphanage, but not in the day-to-day moments of parenting that make up our days. She is our child, the little girl that God meant for us, just like He meant our other kids for us.

Sometimes when we're out I feel people noticing us (or staring at us!), noticing that we don't all match. Sometimes I wish they would ask about our family, because I'd love to tell them what an amazing thing God has done for all of us by bringing us together. If they wanted to know, I'd tell them about all the other little girls who don't have families, the ones Scott saw standing in their cribs, or sitting in the cold and sparsely furnished playroom at Gwen's orphanage.

I know I have digressed... all I really want to express today is my thankfulness for this incredible gift of children. However they come to you, by birth or adoption, they are most certainly from God. And I am so grateful for the four He has trusted to our care.